World Trust

We’ve written before about how Google and others in the tech sector have begun to see the value of racial equity education, and we are pleased to have an opportunity to directly support this evolution. Kalimah Priforce, CEO of Qeyno Labs in Oakland, California has asked World Trust to host a racial equity training session early next month for technologists from companies, such as Google, Salesforce.com and Pandora, who will mentor youths through his Hackathon program.

No racists, no problem. Right?“This is a pretty genteel environment, and you don’t usually see outright manifestations of bias,” says Laszlo Bock, head of human resources at Google. Sound familiar?

As a leader responsible for diversity and inclusion, you may have seen how “no outward manifestation of bias” can translate into institutional apathy about diversity education.If no one is engaging in overtly segregated hiring or using racial slurs, there is little urgency. So why is Google training all employees and pushing hard for a cultural shift?

Addressing the pipeline is not enoughDespite years of good intentions to hire a more diverse employee base, Google’s work force is just 2% black and 3% Hispanic, and 30% female. Google had begun to address the external factors years earlier, or so it thought, by sponsoring programs to increase the number of women and minorities who go into tech. At World Trust, we see this is common first approach across sectors. “What do we neeed to do to hire X percentage people of color?”